New York lawmakers to end mandatory test-evaluation link

But there will still be plenty of tests, critics say

Students from various counties within the Assembly District of Angelo Santabarbara, background. take the positions of Assemblymen and women as they run a "hearing" on the effect of untethering standardized tests from teacher evaluations at the Legislative Office Building Thursday May 31, 2018 in Albany, N.Y. (Skip Dickstein/Times Union) less

Students from various counties within the Assembly District of Angelo Santabarbara, background. take the positions of Assemblymen and women as they run a "hearing" on the effect of untethering standardized ... more

Students from various counties within the Assembly District of Angelo Santabarbara, background. take the positions of Assemblymen and women as they run a "hearing" on the effect of untethering standardized tests from teacher evaluations at the Legislative Office Building Thursday May 31, 2018 in Albany, N.Y. (Skip Dickstein/Times Union) less

Students from various counties within the Assembly District of Angelo Santabarbara, background. take the positions of Assemblymen and women as they run a "hearing" on the effect of untethering standardized ... more

ALBANY — A bill to ban the mandatory use of state tests in teacher evaluations is set to pass in the Legislature this week, but that doesn’t mean the end of questions over testing, specifically how many exams that K-12 students have to take in a year.

“I do have concerns about the bill,” freshman Manhattan Democratic Sen. Robert Jackson said Tuesday during a meeting of the Senate Education Committee. As their first action of 2019, committee members voted unanimously to move forward on a teacher testing bill that floundered at the end of the 2018 session in June.

Long sought by the politically powerful state teachers' union, New York State United Teachers, the measure would void the rule that student scores on standardized grade 3-8 English and math tests must be used to evaluate teacher performance.

That plan, which dates back five years, provoked a backlash among the union, which has made Tuesday’s bill a priority.

But as Jackson explained, the bill doesn’t completely ban the use of tests in evaluating teachers.

“It’s not saying ‘Do not use test scores to evaluate teachers,’" added Lisa Rudley of NYS Allies for Public Education, a group that is critical of over-testing. “It just says you do not have to use the state tests.”

State tests or not, teachers still need to undergo regular evaluations that can be drawn from locally based tests which have to be approved by the state Education Department, noted Yonkers Democratic Sen. Shelley Mayer, who chairs the Senate Education Committee.

Those evaluations are required under federal rules. The evaluations are known as Annual Professional Performance Reviews or APPR. Rules for carrying out these reviews are set by the state Board of Regents.

The Regents had earlier imposed a moratorium on the mandatory use of 3-8 tests for teacher evaluations.